2022 In Review: Series Finales, Graded!

With over 100 shows having ended this year, we endured many, many tough goodbyes to some of our favorite comedies and dramas in 2022. But not every one of them was intended to be a farewell, and even those that were didn't always hit the mark.

Below, TVLine has gathered more than a dozen planned series finales (with a few exceptions) that stood out — for better or for worse — from the past 12 months. Among our selections, you'll find broadcast faves like NBC's This Is Us and CBS' Bull, CW superheroes and vampires, and critical darlings Better Call Saul and Better Things. We've also singled out the final hours of Atlanta, Dead to Me, The Walking Dead, Ozark and more — but is that a good thing? You'll just have to read on to find out!

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING FINALES ARE NOT RANKED. Rather, the grades chosen reflect how each show did (or did not) stick the landing based on their respective runs. Also, as stated above, we did not grade every single series finale from 2022, but instead chose a select few series that ended on their own terms.

Scroll down to see which finales made their mark on Team TVLine, then share your opinions on the best (and worst) series sign-offs of 2022 by dropping a comment.

Ricky Gervais' story about a grieving widower fumbling his way through life had all sorts of low and sad moments. But despite Tony's occasional suicidal thoughts, anger and disinterest in society, his strong support system helped him turn it all around. The finale didn't dare leave him fixed or even "happy," however, Tony vowed to use Lisa's life insurance money for good, helping those in need and making a difference where he can. Though he accepted the fact that he'll always be grieving his late wife, he was also able to accept the fact that life goes on.

Though the TNT drama spent most of its final season treading water, it at least made a splash with its action-packed finale, which turned both Craig and Pope into casualties of nephew J's byzantine plot to avenge his mother and run away with grandmonster Smurf's fortune.

Donald Glover's surreal FX comedy went out on an appropriately bonkers note, with Darius embarking on a mind-bending adventure while soaking in a sensory deprivation tank. Plus, Earn, Al and Van's lunch at a Black-owned sushi restaurant turned into a life-and-death standoff. (If only they'd eaten at Popeyes, like Al wanted.) Was the whole episode a dream? Was the whole series? We can't be sure, but we are sure we thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Breaking Bad had one of TV's best series finales ever, so AMC's prequel had big shoes to fill, but it exceeded our expectations with a note-perfect final episode. Jimmy McGill finally came clean with a stirring courtroom confession that doubled as a series-best performance from Bob Odenkirk, and Jimmy's final scene with Kim, sharing a cigarette during a prison visit, was a perfectly bittersweet coda to their rocky romance. We're filing this one away right up there with Breaking Bad on our all-time list.

What better way to say goodbye to an entire cast of characters than to host Sunny and Jeff's second wedding? That's exactly what Pamela Adlon's Sam did in the critically acclaimed comedy's final installment. With the series' many recurring folks gathered together, Better Things served up plenty of its signature food porn, boisterous laughs, last words from Sam's circle and a cheery sing-a-along that reminded us to "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." A fitting farewell, indeed.

As the Johnsons prepared to move from Sherman Oaks to a Black neighborhood, black-ish's final episode was a survey of everything we loved about the ABC comedy. We got wry racial humor. We got an unexpected cameo (hi, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles!). And we got an exuberant homegoing ceremony that honored everything the show had been over the course of its eight seasons.

The CBS series capped its six-season run with a two-parter in which Bull & Co. learned that a client not only was guilty of the crime at hand (purposely poisoning tenants with carbon monoxide), but that he did so in the name of covering up a PAST murder! In the end, Bull sacrificed his courtroom privileges by blurting out enough to trigger a mistrial, after which he protected TAC by bidding the team adieu and leaving savvy Marissa in charge. Justice was aptly served.

Mel, Maggie and Kaela's battle against Inara, one third of the "first sisterhood" of Charmed Ones, was an appropriately climactic way to end the series, even if the final episode of Season 4 wasn't meant to be a definitive ending. And while a large portion of the fandom rolled its eyes when the sisters were transported to Halliwell Manor (aka the sisters' home from the original series) at the end of the hour, you've got to hand it to the reboot for taking one last big swing.

The final episode of TNT's wildly campy dark comedy featured sassy one-liners, big explosions and an elaborately faked death. In other words: Claws be Clawin'. It did take some of the fun out of the finale when Niecy Nash's Desna disappeared for large portions of the running time — a side effect of the COVID pandemic, apparently — but it warmed our hearts to see Desna and her nail crew reunited and partying it up in Cuba as the credits rolled.

Having the luxury of knowing that renewal was iffy, showrunner Geoff Johns assembled a Season 3/ series finale that picked up after the massive Ultra-Humanite reveal and then launched into an epic junkyard fight scene. The 10 minutes or so that followed was a bit clunky, checking off so, so many boxes in the name of closure, but the "Ten Years Later" flashforward that saw Richard Swift educating a tour group on the JSA's legendary exploits, before Jay Garrick's Flash sped onto the scene with urgent news, capped the hour with all kinds of thrills.

The Christina Applegate-Linda Cardellini Netflix dramedy bowed out with the perfect blend of hijinks and heart, all while cementing its status as one of TV's most entertaining depictions of female friendship. We weren't even annoyed by the ambiguity-saturated cliffhanger ending, which for a show that unapologetically trafficked in laughably improbable twists, felt perfectly on brand.

As much as we appreciated seeing Steven again, his long-overdue return didn't get nearly the amount of screen time it deserved. Instead, the reboot's final hour focused on far less interesting storylines, from Alexis' new husband being lost in the woods to Fallon fighting for control of her company for the millionth time. For a primetime soap known for being over the top, we were hoping it would go out with a bigger bang.

To have gotten another three seasons of this sci-fi saga after its Syfy cancellation was glorious. And yet the series finale could not help be as bittersweet as it was satisfying — especially with more James S. A. Corey books left to adapt! The Prime Video series' final hour delivered nifty space battles and stratagem, but also quieter, weightier moments, such as the "last family meal" pictured above. The Belters et al took the fight to Marco and won; Naomi made a gut-wrenching decision along the way, but we saw that an overdue epiphany in fact saved Filip's life; and Holden and Drummer teamed up for a crowd-pleasing, presidential bait-and-switch. What fury might the awakened Ring eventually bring? We are left to wonder, but thankful that we got as much of The Expanse as we did.

Despite it occasionally feeling a tad rushed and overstuffed, the Paramount+ legal drama's sendoff gave us everything we loved about The Good Wife spinoff: suspense, cheekiness and moral/ethical complexity. It also delivered one satisfying emotional payoff after another, delivered by one of TV's most underrated ensembles.

The Netflix comedy delivered a satisfying ending that saw its titular duo, who were at odds this season, finally resolve their frivolous feud and realize how much they loved and needed each other. Plus, after seven seasons of waiting, we finally got the 9 to 5 reunion we've been asking for when Dolly Parton showed up as a guardian angel in heaven who helps Grace and Frankie return to Earth together.

The final chapter of BBC America's blood-soaked thriller did deliver some long-awaited moments, like Eve and Villanelle finally acting on their feelings during an impromptu road trip. (Them singing along to "Don't You Want Me" was perfect, no notes.) But yeah, that ending... Villanelle was shot dead by a sniper in the final minutes, tainting the one moment of true happiness she and Eve got to enjoy in the whole series. Yes, this is Killing Eve, so we shouldn't be surprised someone died, but the last-minute offing of Villanelle just felt like a heartless rug-yanking for fans who faithfully followed the show for four seasons, not to mention yet another slap in the face to LGBTQ viewers hoping to see a romance that doesn't end in death for once. Ah well... we'll always have that road trip, at least.

For a franchise that's nearly as old as The CW itself, there's no question that Legacies deserved a more epic series finale. Still, we commend the Powers That Be for securing long-overdue appearances from Joseph Morgan and Candice King, without which the show's final hour wouldn't have packed such an emotional punch. The only silver lining? We all know this isn't really the end.

This particular grade would be a little higher if Love, Victor had ended about three minutes sooner than it actually did: Most of the characters on Hulu's coming-of-age series had reached optimistic endings, and Victor seemed genuinely content to be romantically unattached for the first time in months. But just as we were cheering the show's decision to leave its teen protagonist single, on-again-off-again love interest Benji returned for a last-minute Ferris wheel ride with Victor. Instead of resonating as the romantic reunion of two soulmates, Benji and Victor's eventual "on again" status rang more as a disappointing regression for both of them — and a waste of Victor's newfound self-love.

We're still on the fence about what most irked us about the Netflix thriller's predictably frustrating climax: That the much-ballyhooed flash-forward car accident turned out to be the lowest form of red herring, or the contrived final scene that saw one of the series' few redeeming characters implausibly murdering an innocent man.

The OWN family drama closed out its seventh and final season with some answers (Hollywood won his school board election, but Charley is not headed to Congress), some big wins (Vi's pies are a hit and she's fostering a 10-year-old girl), a last bit of Micah drama, a couple of fan-servicey cameos (hey, Remy!) and a flurry of flashbacks in which the great Glynn Turman reprised his role as family patriarch Ernest Bordelon. There were some debatable turns (Nova decides to go all in with Calvin) along the way, but the land auction's twist made us cheer, segueing into a beautiful montage of Ernest "watching over" near-future versions of his kin and their blossoming lives.

Two words: #Malex. Wedding. Michael and Alex's romantic nuptials were the perfect way to celebrate this show's four-season run, even if the writers still had plenty of ideas left in the tank. Getting to see Shiri Appleby (aka the OG Liz) rocking a Crashdown Cafe headband was also a nice touch.

We always appreciated the looney antics of Search Party's core four, but the series' entire final season was chaotic, and not in a good way. In the final episode, Dory realized that she accidentally started a zombie apocalypse. We didn't have that on our finale bingo card, nor was it the ending we ever would've wished for Dory, Elliott, Portia and Drew... even if loving to hate them was the whole point of the thing.

Maybe it's that the NBC drama's penultimate installment, "The Train," was so damn good. Maybe it's that we didn't want to spend so much of our final hour with the Pearsons at a somber memorial service. But the show's last episode, which chronicled Rebecca's funeral and flashed back to a nondescript weekend afternoon in the family's past, felt like a letdown after a really compelling final season.

Maybe it was asking for too much to want the long-running AMC drama's ending to be as exciting as its beginning. But with only one major death (Rosita's) and a bunch of resolutions that hardly qualified as revelations, the series' sendoff was too ho-hum to be saved by even glimpses of a spinoff-bound Rick and Michonne.